It's really been quite demoralizing, reading and hearing and seeing so much activity, so much rhetoric, so much strange thinking from what we call "the right." I find it hard to watch the news, to read the stories online, to listen to the radio and be reminded over and over that there are some people out to "remake" America into some twisted ideal that they seem to hold in their minds.

I can't call them conservatives, for these people are not about small government with responsible spending within means -- nor are they about respecting the privacy of citizens and leaving people to their own business. I can't call them Republicans, for there are many many Republicans just as disturbed by the present turn of events as I am. I can't call them red state people, because the people who voted red are not the ones cynically manipulating the press and hiding behind the darkest veils of secrecy in this country's modern age.

I've called them wingnuts, because they seem nuts to me, but that is perhaps rather rude. I've called them radicals, but that almost seems too kind. I've called them fascists, but I don't think that quite captures the scope of their dark vision of a "new world order."

What they do seem to be are people who truly hate America as it is right now. They mistrust the citizenry and oppose civil rights. They viciously oppose any restriction on their ability to manipulate the system to make more money for themselves and their own. They get almost rabidly vitriolic when they confront the reality of racial, ethnic, sexual and economic diversity in this country. They absolutely despise any and all programs designed to provide any sort of community safety net. They abhor notions of human rights in this world. They suppress any and all efforts and the liberation and empowerment of women, here and abroad. And they fear all the way down to their bones the Enlightenment, Reason and Science, and work with all their passion, energy and strength to destroy them to create a new vision of the world, starting right here in America.

Is there a label that captures that?

Who are these people? Why do they want to change America so much? Is America really that awful?

When I look at America, I see a great nation. The tone was set by George Washington, the man who would not be king, the man who retired after two terms and oversaw the first peaceful transfer of power. The tone was set in the Constitution of the United States of America, which codified a set of principles and rules that have allowed this country to see the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, voting rights, civil rights -- all tumultuous changes in the moral fabric of our society -- without bloody coup or government overthrow.

I see a country that embraced the freedom of people to speculate on their own futures and take risks, free of the threat of debtor's prison. I see a country that, in facing economic disaster, stood together, pooling resources so that all citizens stood together as a society, secure against the most dire costs risked with uncertainty.

I see a country that mobilized its entire economy and population to fight a war against nations that did not respect citizens' rights, built up frightening military machines, and dared to dictate to other nations how they should live. I see a nation that, after conquering dozens of nations militarily, proceeded not only to withdraw without claiming any sovereignty, but also gave blood and treasure to help those nations -- including the vanquished enemies -- rebuild from their ravages of war.

I see a country that, time and again, has faced its dark demons and changed its ways. I see a country that led the world in compassion and generosity, a country that, despite its overwhelming wealth and power, has been admired and respected all around the world.

I see a country that, when it was attacked viciously by religious fanatics, received the overwhelming sympathy and compassion and support of the entire world. Flowers in plazas and at embassies in all the capitals memorialized those killed in the attacks on America. Nations pledged their support and cooperation to help ensure that such a thing never would happen again.

And then the darkness came.

Now I see a group of people, rooted in wealth, entrenched in the corporatocracy, powerful in the government, with great influence on the media, doing everything it can to tear down these things that have made America great.

They seem to flip the cart in front of the horse, claiming not that America is great because of the great things it does, but rather they claim that America is great, therefore it can do what it wants.

They embrace and employ the use of torture, and consider human rights "quaint" and inconvenient.

They quash free speech.

They embrace "might makes right" as foreign policy doctrine.

They ignore the importance of a strong economy.

They treat the citizens of this country as the enemy.

They work to tear apart the social programs that provide the modest safety net that exists.

They seek to take away women's rights over their own bodies and their own lives.

They endeavor to destroy public education.

They make a crime not only what someone does, but what someone might do.

They do whatever is necessary to disempower minority cultures and communities in matters of elections.

...and not just a few other things, too.

And if anyone speaks up against these and the many many other outrages they perpetrate on this great nation, that person is shouted down, labeled a traitor, sued, harrassed, silenced, arrested....

They want to "fix" America, as if all this time it's been a horrible travesty of immoral and impractical developments over the decades and centuries since its founding.

Why?

I certainly can see some things that could use some fixing in this country.

Let's start with the pollution we're poisoning ourselves with.

The mysterious and mostly secret food industry that is getting away with all it can.

The paramilitary adventures upon which we've embarked in the name of political and corporate expediency (such as Honduras and Guatemala and other places in Central and South America).

The ongoing widespread poverty and institutionalized neglect of the Americans who were here before the Europeans arrived.

The richest healthcare system in the world that, nevertheless, cannot provide for 20% of the American population.

The homelessness and poverty of children that persists through even the best of economic times.

The decline in education and academic performance of our children that is taking us towards the bottom of the industrial world.

The systematic destruction of population control programs around the globe.

The infant mortality rate that is one of the worst of all industrialized nations.

The neglected nuclear waste that will remain fatally radioactive for thousands of years.

The inequality and inadequacy of our educational system that deprives millions of Americans a decent education, and deprives America of the fruits of their untapped talents.

...and not just a few other things, too.

Why ignore all these things, the real problems that real people face, and instead try to tear down the very things we were doing right, the very things that have made this country great?

Is it all about profit, at the expense of the rest of us? Is it all about power, and doing whatever it takes to hang onto it? Is it about some twisted idealistic vision of the world where faith dictates knowledge and reason is the enemy?

Am I just too much the peasant, too much the powerless, too much the rational person to appreciate this "new world order"?

Or do they really think that we won't notice? Do they think we're that stupid? Or is it really that we are that stupid?

Or has it always been like this, and I'm only noticing because there's nothing very good on TV this year? Is my "sin" simply paying attention?

I don't think I've ever been so depressed about the current state and future of my country. I don't think I've ever been so afraid for the world.

President Summer at Harvard made some remarks at the "NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce" that some might term "unfortunate." As a female scientist and graduate of that fine institution, I have to point something out.

First, let me start off by recalling Summer's remarks that it is expected that individuals who lead organizations will be working far beyond a 40 hour week. As anyone who has attended Harvard will stipulate, just getting a degree from that institution takes the student well over 40 hours a week.

Hence, time spent working is not where females fail.

Yet, when Summers speaks of time beyond the 40 hours, as we all know, it is not just 40 hours at a desk or lab bench. It is time rubbing elbows. I especially recall a Harvard graduate student -- a former carrier pilot -- say without shame, something like: you women will never be equal because you don't play squash.

We retorted, are you saying we need to play squash to get ahead?

No, he answered. You need to be literally in the men's locker room.

In short, we had to be "men" to be in a man's world more than 40 hours and President Summers should have figured that out, by now.

Put it another way. For a time I worked in a family held firm. During office hours, I was a hot-shot executive. After hours the clan would get together. This was the "real" company meeting. What happened at the office was merely the memorializing what took place over hot dogs and beer the week-end before.

The "family" in the case of women scientists, is the family of men.

The reason Summers does not see it is that he is not a woman and therefore blind to this. He's in the locker room with the boys. "What in hell are those annoying women moaning about, anyway? Sigh."

what fraction of young women in their mid-twenties make a decision that they don't want to have a job that they think about eighty hours a week. What fraction of young men make a decision that they're unwilling to have a job that they think about eighty hours a week, and to observe what the difference is. And that has got to be a large part of what is observed. Now that begs entirely the normative questions-which I'll get to a little later-of, is our society right to expect that level of effort from people who hold the most prominent jobs? Is our society right to have familial arrangements in which women are asked to make that choice and asked more to make that choice than men?

To me, these are valid questions. But then he manages to wade into a thicket of nonsense.

The second thing that I think one has to recognize is present is what I would call the combination of, and here, I'm focusing on something that would seek to answer the question of why is the pattern different in science and engineering, and why is the representation even lower and more problematic in science and engineering than it is in other fields. And here, you can get a fair distance, it seems to me, looking at a relatively simple hypothesis. It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population. And that is true with respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly, culturally determined.

He follows this argument up with his own "very crude calculation, which I'm sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways," of data on how well girls perform on mathematics in twelfth grade.

Here is where I think he starts to get even more outrageous:

Now, it's pointed out by one of the papers at this conference that these tests are not a very good measure and are not highly predictive with respect to people's ability to do that. And that's absolutely right. But I don't think that resolves the issue at all. Because if my reading of the data is right-it's something people can argue about-that there are some systematic differences in variability in different populations, then whatever the set of attributes are that are precisely defined to correlate with being an aeronautical engineer at MIT or being a chemist at Berkeley, those are probably different in their standard deviations as well. So my sense is that the unfortunate truth-I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true-is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem.

Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't this read as a long way of saying, "Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up?"

He goes on about how women in Kibbutzes in Israel each fell into traditional female roles, not fixing tractors, etc., and how his baby daughters reacted to dolls and toy trucks, which one would think could not be separated from cultural influences. Ah, but you're wrong, grasshopper.

First, most of what we've learned from empirical psychology in the last fifteen years has been that people naturally attribute things to socialization that are in fact not attributable to socialization. We've been astounded by the results of separated twins studies. The confident assertions that autism was a reflection of parental characteristics that were absolutely supported and that people knew from years of observational evidence have now been proven to be wrong. And so, the human mind has a tendency to grab to the socialization hypothesis when you can see it, and it often turns out not to be true.

It sounds like he's saying that cultural influences are suspect because they've been proven not to cause autism. Maybe I'm just not Harvard material, but that reasoning would not fly in the colleges I attended. (To be fair, in the Q&A afterwards, he backpedals from his conclusions here, saying, "I wasn't at all trying to connect those studies to the particular experiences of women and minorities who were thinking about academic careers." But he made that statement only when challenged by an audience member over his apparent conclusions.)

Summers, from his perspective as an educated white male, then manages to dismiss any real effect of discrimination (of any kind) in academic society:

If it was really the case that everybody was discriminating, there would be very substantial opportunities for a limited number of people who were not prepared to discriminate to assemble remarkable departments of high quality people at relatively limited cost simply by the act of their not discriminating, because of what it would mean for the pool that was available. And there are certainly examples of institutions that have focused on increasing their diversity to their substantial benefit, but if there was really a pervasive pattern of discrimination that was leaving an extraordinary number of high-quality potential candidates behind, one suspects that in the highly competitive academic marketplace, there would be more examples of institutions that succeeded substantially by working to fill the gap. And I think one sees relatively little evidence of that.

Could it be that he doesn't have the tools to measure those more diverse institutions? Could it be that he doesn't see any value in the actual benefits diversity might provide? To suggest that because diverse institutions aren't trouncing the competition, there is no real discrimination at work, again would not have passed the elementary logic class I took in my freshman year. It's especially ironic, isn't it, that just a few days ago Wired published, Where are All the Women?, which reported:

Companies with the most women in senior management had a 35 percent higher return on equity than those with the fewest, according to a study (.pdf) by Catalyst, a nonprofit group that studies women in business. It also found those companies paid their shareholders 34 percent more than companies with the fewest women in top management.

Those seem to be pretty concrete figures. Ah, but Summers is talking about academia, and that must be totally different. Right? I mean come on, we all know academics aren't supposed to actually pay attention to the real world. (A lot of them didn't seem to be when I was on campus.) He couldn't be expected to change his conclusions now, could he?

Going through Summers' remarks, I really cannot believe this is a highly educated fellow, let alone the head of what is commonly considered the premier higher education institution of arts and sciences in the land.

So where is all this leading? To this:

So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them. [Emphasis added]

Would he like to be proven wrong? He's demonstrated in this very speech that he's quite ready and willing to dismiss any evidence contrary to his beliefs.

He goes on in this transcript -- which he first said did not exist, and then said did exist but he would not release it -- to talk about measures for promotion, taking breaks of two or three years from work for other pursuits, "fetishizing" search procedures, and other things that I leave to those with more current and more in-depth familiarity with the world of academia to evaluate.

According to the transcript, after Summers' remarks, someone asks a question:

Raising that particular issue, as a biologist, I neither believe in all genetic or all environment, that in fact behavior in any other country actually develops [unintelligible] interaction of those aspects. And I agree with you, in fact, that it is wrong-headed to just dismiss the biology. But to put too much weight to it is also incredibly wrong-headed, given the fact that had people actually had different kinds of opportunities, and different opportunities for socialization, there is good evidence to indicate in fact that it would have had different outcomes.

The questioner goes on to cite some evidence. Summers responds:

I understand. I think you're obviously right that there's no absolute objectivity, and you're-there's no question about that. My own instincts actually are that you could go wrong in a number of respects fetishizing objectivity for exactly the reasons that you suggest.

"Fetishizing objectivity"? That strikes me as an oxymoron. Isn't objectivity supposedly free of outside influence or restrictions in perspective? Isn't fetishizing a reference to compulsive, irrational behavior? Is "fetishizing" academic jargon with meaning contrary to the common usage? (Academics, help me here.)

Another questioner asks:

There is a contradiction in your three major observations that is the high-powered intensive need of scientific work-that's the first-and then the ability, and then the socialization, the social process. Would it be possible the first two result from the last one and that math ability could be a result of education, parenting, a lot of things. We only observe what happens, we don't know the reason for why there's a variance.

That seems quite sensible. In response, Summers suggests that people tend to over-estimate the influence of parenting on children, and cites a book that is "probably wrong" as authority.

Near the end of the Q&A, Summers finally says:

I don't presume to have proved any view that I expressed here, but if you think there is proof for an alternative theory, I'd want you to be hesitant about that.

Is this what he was doing? My reading of his remarks is that he's suggesting that the alternative theories are wrong, and that if there is any doubt, it's best to assume that women just lack the aptitude for mathematics and science.

Though my NBER remarks were explicitly speculative, and noted that "I may be all wrong," I should have left such speculation to those more expert in the relevant fields. I especially regret the backlash directed against individuals who have taken issue with aspects of what I said.

To be sure, Democrats were right to challenge segregation and racism, support the revolution in women's roles in society, to protect rights to abortion and to back the civil rights of gays. But a party can make only so many enemies before it loses the ability to do anything for the people who depend on it. For decades, many liberals thought they could ignore the elementary demand of politics - winning elections - because they could go to court to achieve these goals on constitutional grounds. The great thing about legal victories like Roe v. Wade is that you don't have to compromise with your opponents, or even win over majority opinion. But that is also the trouble. An unreconciled losing side and unconvinced public may eventually change the judges.

And now we have reached that point. The Republicans, with their party in control of both elected branches - and looking to create a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that will stand for a generation - see the opportunity to overthrow policies and constitutional precedents reaching back to the New Deal.

That prospect ought to concentrate the liberal mind. Social Security, progressive taxation, affordable health care, the constitutional basis for environmental and labor regulation, separation of church and state - these issues and more hang in the balance.

Under these circumstances, liberal Democrats ought to ask themselves a big question: are they better off as the dominant force in an ideologically pure minority party, or as one of several influences in an ideologically varied party that can win at the polls? The latter, it seems clear, is the better choice.

Apparently the Republicans weren't doing anything during all this. Apparently Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were just paper tigers, sitting on their considerable asses, doing nothing. Apparently there have been no politics fought over the past 30 years.

No. Apparently the problem is not that the Dems weren't politicking well, they just had wrong positions that cannot win.

Public support for abortion rights is far greater than for gay marriage, but compromise may be equally imperative - especially if a reshaped Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade by finding that there is no constitutional right to abortion and throws the issue back to the states. Some savvy Democrats are already thinking along these lines, as Hillary Clinton showed this week when she urged liberals to find "common ground" with those who have misgivings about abortion.

In other words, women and gays are political liabilities. Of course, comfortable in his male privilege, Starr probably does not see a woman's control over her own body as being a woman's issue.

Most liberals donâ€™t want to hear the message that these voters and others in the red states are sending. But in a democracy, you can only make so many enemies until you can no longer do any good for the people who depend on you. Liberals need to decide what is central to the great moral achievements of the past half-century -- and what isnâ€™t. Going down to perpetual defeat isnâ€™t a moral choice.

(Why is it when I read Starr, I hear David Brooks in my head?)

Here's a flash, Mister Starr: Maybe the Democrats "can no longer do any good" because most of them aren't even trying. Maybe they're suffering because every time push as come to shove, they've smirked and put up their hands and said, "Shucks, we don't want to be partisan! We don't want to make Karl Rove angry at us!" In case you haven't noticed, the GOP has been hammering their message for decades now. They've gotten people to listen to them.

Meanwhile the Dems have been doing ... not so much. And has it worked? John Kerry was against gay marriage. What did that get him? (He lost.) Why is it that, despite his position on gay marriage, everyone is saying he lost Ohio because his opponents got out the vote over gay marriage? Could it be that pandering doesn't win votes? And yet even now, prominent Democrats and members of the punditocracy say that the Democrats should try the same calculus with choice? Excuse me, but what the fuck is that?!

Maybe Starr should let go of his professorial arrogance for just a moment and reflect upon why he, as a self-proclaimed progressive, has come to believe that the Democrats should dismantle their platform, compromise on moral issues and try to look more like Republicans in order to win elections. Maybe he's been watching too much corporate news media. Maybe he's cowed by Rush and O'Reilly. I don't know.

My own sense is that, as long as people like Starr have sway on the Democratic leadership and representatives, Democrats will continue to lose and lose and lose....People don't follow followers.

And that's not even the most offensive thing. There's a darker side to Starr's polemic, something that is all-too-common in our society. As Scott Lemieux said two months ago:

I think it's also worth noting that it's pretty easy for straight white males to suggest that women should give up their silly reproductive rights, gay people should be happy with their second-class citizenship, etc. I'd be more willing to listen to people willing to sell out their own interests.

That afternoon, the American ofï¬?cer lit a mixture of human feces and urine in a metal container and gave Selwa a heavy club to stir it. She recalls, â€œThe ï¬?re from the pot felt very strong on my face.â€? She leans forward and sweeps her hands through the air to show how she stirred the excrement. â€œI became very tired,â€? she says. â€œI told the sergeant I couldnâ€™t do it.â€?

â€œThere was another man close to us. The sergeant came up to me and whispered in my ear, â€˜If you donâ€™t, I will tell one of the soldiers to fuck you.â€™â€?

...

Some women and children are picked up because theyâ€™re a â€œsecurity threat,â€? Johnson says. And some women are detained because theyâ€™re the sisters, wives, or girlfriends of suspected insurgents -- that is, because the military thinks these women might provide information on the insurgency. But this practice, like the instances of torture exposed last year, violates the Geneva Conventions, which stipulate that no one can â€œbe punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.â€? In one such incident, a 28-year-old mother of three, including the 6-month-old baby she was nursing, was captured on May 9, 2004.

...

When Selwa talks about Abu Ghraib and the detention facilities, her voice is soft.

â€œWhenever I remember, itâ€™s like a ï¬?re goes out,â€? she says. â€œOnce I saw the guards hit a woman, probably 30 years old. They put her in an open area and said, â€˜Come out so you can see her.â€™ They pulled her by the hair and poured ice water on her. She was screaming and shouting and crying as they poured water into her mouth. They left her there all night. There was another girl; the soldiers said she wasnâ€™t honest with them. They said she gave them wrong information. When I saw her, she had electric burns all over her body.â€?

...

I ask her if she was sexually assaulted.

â€œNo,â€? she says. â€œThey respected me.â€? She pushes her chair away from the table.

Asked if she was ever forced to take her clothes off, she leans back and pulls her jacket over her chest and covers part of her face with her hand. She looks downward and bites her thumb. Her eyes are half-closed, and her shoulders are slumped.

â€œI donâ€™t remember,â€? she says. She folds her arms across her chest and her eyes ï¬?ll with tears. She stares at the ground. A few minutes later, she excuses herself and leaves the room.

...

â€œAfter that, they took me to [a detention center near Baghdad International Airport]. There, I heard a young woman crying out from her cell, telling an American soldier to leave her alone. She said, â€˜I am a Muslim woman.â€™ Her voice was high-pitched and shaky. Her husband, who was in a cell down the hall, called out, â€˜She is my wife. She has nothing to do with this.â€™ He hit the bars of his cell with his ï¬?sts until he fainted. The Americans poured water over his face and made him wake up. When her screams became louder, the soldiers played music over the speakers. Finally, they took her to another room. I couldnâ€™t hear anything more.â€?

Afterward, Mithal says, she was taken to Abu Ghraib. â€œThey stripped me and searched me,â€? she remembers. â€œThen they gave me blankets and put me in solitary conï¬?nement in a room 2 meters by 1 and a half meters. There was no light in the room. I was there for three months.â€?

...

"...I was taken to another place for the interrogation. They asked me about my brother. I said, â€˜I donâ€™t know where he is.â€™ They said, â€˜You have seen the dog. Now tell us the truth.â€™â€?

I ask her if they touched her during the interrogation.

â€œI wonâ€™t answer this question,â€? she says. â€œI promised them I would not say anything about this.â€?

...

I ask if thereâ€™s anything else she wants to tell me. â€œI am an Iraqi woman, and I refuse to allow an American or anyone else to occupy my land,â€? she says. â€œThey told us they are going to give us liberty, and we have found something totally different.â€?